"Mr. Schwartz and my father are allies politically," the girl explained with heightened color, "but they are not friends. My father is a gentleman." The inference I allowed to pass unnoticed, and as if she feared she had said too much, the girl rose. When she left, a few minutes later, it was with the promise that she would close the Monmouth Avenue house and go to her aunts at Bellwood, at once. For myself, I pledged a thorough search for her father, and began it by watching the scarlet wing on her hat through the top of the elevator cage until it had descended out of sight. I am afraid it was a queer hodgepodge of clues and sentiment that I poured out to Hunter, the detective, when he came up late that afternoon. Hunter was quiet when I finished my story. "They're rotten clear through," he reflected. "This administration is worse than the last, and it was a peach. There have been more suicides than I could count on my two hands, in the last ten years. I warn you--you'd be better out of this mess." "What do you think about the eleven twenty-two?" I asked as he got up and buttoned his coat. "Well, it might mean almost anything. It might be that many dollars, or the time a train starts, or it might be the eleventh and the twenty-second letters of the alphabet--k--v." "K--v!" I repeated, "Why that would be the Latin _cave_--beware." Hunter smiled cheerfully. "You'd better stick to the law, Mr. Knox," he said from the door. "We don't use Latin in the detective business." CHAPTER II UNEASY APPREHENSIONS Plattsburg was not the name of the capital, but it will do for this story. The state doesn't matter either. You may take your choice, like the story Mark Twain wrote, with all kinds of weather at the beginning, so the reader could take his pick. We will say that my home city is Manchester. I live with my married brother, his wife and two boys. Fred is older than I am, and he is an exceptional brother. On the day he came home from his wedding trip, I went down with my traps on a hansom, in accordance with a prearranged schedule. Fred and Edith met me inside the door. "Here's your latch-key, Jack," Fred said, as he shook hands. "Only one stipulation--remember we are strangers in the vicinity and try to get home before the neighbors are up. We have our reputations to think of." "There is no hour for breakfast," Edith said, as she kissed me. "You have a bath of your own, and don't smoke in the drawing-room." Fred was always a lucky devil. I had been there now for six years. I had helped to raise two young Knoxes--bully youngsters, too: the oldest one could use boxing-gloves when he was four--and the finest collie pup in our end of the state. I wanted to raise other things--the boys liked pets--but Edith was like all women, she didn't care for animals.